


Bittersweet Memories

by Gingervivi



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/F, Not Beta Read, just emotional stuff, non-canon job for f!sosu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-18
Updated: 2015-11-18
Packaged: 2018-05-02 05:53:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5236781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gingervivi/pseuds/Gingervivi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Piper wants to know more about Yan and her time before the bombs fell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was unimpressed that the husband's death is barely mentioned. I felt like watching your husband die would hugely impact starting a romance with someone, but apparently that's not the case. (Though I haven't finished the game, so who knows.) I wanted to get the husband stuff out in the open before flirting, so here's my solution for it.

"You're looking nice."

Piper's face heated up like the barrel of a minigun. Sanctuary Hills was just that - a sanctuary. People here cared about each other and didn't avoid her like the plague, not like Diamond City. Still, she craved to be back there just as much as she wanted to stay here forever. 

Yan laid across the couch sideways, her feet handing over the edge as she flipped through a medical magazine. She never hid who she was, where she was from, but getting her to actually open up about her pre-war life was hard. Piper initially figured that it the vault dweller was still in shock of how the world had changed, but the way she twisted the ring on her finger made her thing twice.

"W-well, thanks Blue. I mean, I just took a bath-" Oh shit, she's done it now. Why mention the bath? Yan wouldn't try to imagine her bathing, would she? Piper stared at her for just a minute. She didn't look up from her magazine or make any indication she was thinking about anything like that. Okay, she was safe. "You're looking spiffy, too."

That earned a smile. Yan looked up at her, something warm and hopeful in her eyes that lasted on for a second before the smile fell and she focused back on the flimsy reading material. Piper sat in the chair across from her awkward. What else should she saw? Maybe she could ask some more questions? After all, she did do that interview with no noticeable hesitation and maybe it's been enough time to ask more about pre-war life.

"So, Blue, what did you do before the bombs fell?" Piper asked, leaning forward a bit, hopeful for a telling answer. Not that she wanted to trick her into talking! Just, there wasn't a lot of people who could recall the world before the war so accurately. There were the ghouls in Goodneighbor who lived before the bombs fell, but that was still over two hundred years ago. For Yan, it's just been a few months.

"I was in the navy, a hospital corpsman." She set down the magazine and turned on her side to look at Piper. She absently twisted her light hair with a finger.

"So that's how you know that all that medical stuff?" Piper inquired, unable to hide a smile. 

"How do you think I took care of you after you insisted on attracting the attention of those raiders?" Yan said with a soft laugh. "How do I explain this? On top of what I already had to know to be in the Navy, I had some medical training. You couldn't fail anything. Then I worked as a hospital for about a year or so. It's not really... comparable to doctors or nurses. In the field, we could do emergency medical procedures nurses couldn't do, but when I left the military, my training let me be a nurse at a hospital."

Piper must have looked really happy hearing that because Yan wore that knowing smirk. "You really like hearing about this stuff, huh?"

"What? Me? Of course! It's just so... so different. You're different," the reporter bumbled. 

"I'll take that as a compliment," Yan said as she sat up. Her hand barely brushed over her ring and she quickly laid her hands down beside her. "Some of it is hard to talk about. It brings up a lot of memories."

"Bad ones?" Piper asked cautiously. The last thing she'd ever want to do was make Yan uncomfortable.

She shook her head. "Happy ones. They sort of just feel... hollow these days." Silence sat between them like a big, empty void. For a moment, Piper didn't know if she could say anything to that. She was unfamiliar with any kind of situation that involved everything being alright one minute and then waking up in this irradiated wasteland the next.

Instead she said, "Tell me about him."

"What?" Yan looked up at her, surprise written all across her features from the slightly parted mouth to the wide eyes. Her hands ran through her hair as her eyes settled on the ground. Moments passed where Piper feared she had done the worst, that she asked the wrong thing, but Yan smiled and said, "I'd love to."

The stories she told didn't go very fast as she constantly had to stop and explain things about pre-war life and culture that didn't quite make it to today. It was very quickly revealed to Piper just how bittersweet the memories were and why Yan always looked so sad roaming the Commonwealth. 

Piper wasn't sure if Yan was selectively remembering her late husband or if she just hoped she was. Jealousy of a dead man didn't sit well with her, no matter how hard she tried to force it out. Nate sounded like the perfect husband, from giving up his job to take care of their son to handling the catty fellows in their Neighborhood Association. 

"Oh, there are still times I crave his chicken casserole recipe. Never told me the secret ingredient he used, though I doubt I could recreate it now regardless," she ended with a sigh. 

"You really love him, huh?"

"I did love him. God, I miss him so much." Piper couldn't help but hold on to those words, carefully analyzing what she meant. "I mean, I always will love him, but I know I need to move on. Living in the past won't let me live in the here and now." She shook her head. "I'm not sure if that makes any sense."

"I think it makes perfect sense, Blue. Just know... I'm always here for you, alright? Whatever you need," Piper told her and received a smile in return.

"Thank you, Pipes. I'm not sure what I could do without you."

"Oh, I'm sure you'd manage," Piper dismissed, trying to hide the blush in her cheeks. Yan didn't reply. She just looked at her for a moment and picked up her magazine again. This time, she didn't toy with her ring.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yan isn't the only one that faces bittersweet memories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't expecting a Piper/F!Sole Survivor fic to get attention so quickly so I was very motivated to write a second chapter, which had not been my original intention when I wrote the first. However I'm a sucker for complicated feelings, bad flirting, and gals, so here's one about Piper!

Bits of embers fluttered into the night sky, flying between them like a barrier. Piper, sitting on top of her sleeping bag rather than in it, huddled close to the small fire as she looked over at Yan. Despite looking oh-so-comfortable laying in her sleeping bag, she was still awake, eyes trained on the slowly dying flame. 

"Can't keep it too big this late at night, Blue," Piper explained, poking the charred bits with a stick. It crackled and a few pieces fell, flames licking around them. "Someone, if not something, will see."

"I've noticed the nights seem colder," Yan said, shifting her position so she was propped up on her left arm. "Compared to pre-war nights. I think it's the lack of foliage."

Piper shrugged, not sure what to add to that. She was tired, though most of all hungry. They were headed to the nearest Minuteman settlement for supplies, but the sun had set long ago and neither of them were too excited about running through the Commonwealth this late at night. Instead, she chewed on a few pieces of bubblegum to ignore the rumbling of her stomach.

"But I think I like these skies much better." That caught Piper's attention and she watched as Yan stared up at the sky, her hand running through her hair, catching bits of dirt and grass that clung to the platinum blond strange like stains. "We made the switch from gas to nuclear energy, but I think we still had that pollution in the air, not to mention all those lights that were constantly on. Here, you can see the stars perfectly. They're so beautiful."

Piper's face heated up, and not just from the fire she sat too close to, as she resisted the urge to reply, "You are too." How cheesy would that have been? She would have just died of embarrassment. It would be read on her tombstone: Here lies Piper, the Most Unsmooth of all Journalists. Like, Honestly, She's A Reporter, Why Doesn't She Have A Better Way with Flirting with Pre-War Hotties.

Okay, that was a bit wordy, but it's a work in progress.

"Just like you." Wait, what?

Yan was looking straight at her, her mouth still rounded as she finished that last syllable and the corners of her lips turned in a smirk. Okay, now look who's the Cheeseist of Them All. 

"W-whoa, I-I, wow, thank you, Blue. That's so nice- I mean, what a nice thing to say." And then she did something she knew she'd regret: finger guns. "Right back at'cha."

Piper was so glad that Yan didn't laugh- well, she did love Yan's laugh but not right now, not at her. Gosh, that little giggle Yan did was so cute it was almost impossible to recreate in her head. Suddenly, she wanted to hear it again.

"So there was this one time, me, my dad and Nat, were out under the stars almost like this, in that settlement I told you about. Nat and I spent too much time playing outdoors and got a little too far away from community so our dad came after us. We were thankful, to, as we had gotten stuck up in a tree, run up by a radscorpion," Piper recalled. 

"Goodness, a radscorpion was after you?" Yan was now sitting up and leaning just a bit forward. Piper just loved it when people listened to her stories. It didn't happen to much seeing as most people hear her through the paper instead. This was a nice change of pace.

"Don't look so concerned. Turned out, it was a baby, barely even double the size of my fist. Looking back, it wouldn't have been to out run it. All it was doing was circling the base of the tree, so when our dad finally found us, he accidentally stepped on it." Yan laughed just a tad too loudly and quickly covered her mouth as it continued. There is was. Music to her ears.

"Did he even notice?" she asked.

"He asked why we were in the tree and we told him it was a radscorpion and that he squashed. Oh, the look on his face as he looked at the junk on his shoe was priceless. It was so gross," Piper said, now chiming in the some laughs of her own. "I miss him."

"Sounds like someone to miss," Yan knowingly replied as she slinked back down into her sleeping bag. "Let's get some sleep, alright?"

"You go ahead, I'll take the first watch." Looking up at the stars, Piper realized what Yan had meant all those days ago, about happy memories feeling hollow. The stars, glowing bright in an unusually clear sky were nothing compared to seeing a world gone to rust and decay.


End file.
